Teammates downplay Altuve’s off day at plate

When Jose Altuve struck out in his first two plate appearances Wednesday in the Astros’ 5-2 loss to the Mariners, his Astros teammates jokingly tried to fix him in the dugout.

“We just thought he was drained, so we figured we might as well just plug him into the wall and charge him up,” George Springer said. “He struck out twice in a row I think for the first time ever in the history of life. It’s kind of one of those things, he’s been playing Xbox up there for the last six weeks. So you know, his controller was down today, so we had to charge the batteries back up.

“We hooked him up to the stim machine (a muscle stimulating unit), we plugged him in the dugout — there’s an outlet over by the end of the bench, so we plugged him in, gave him some stim over on his arm. He’s good to go.”

Altuve’s averaged dropped to a paltry .343 with an 0-for-4 performance.